Helen Wray

Drip.        Drip.        Drip drop.

Drip drip drop.

His head swivelled slowly towards the sink.  No more dripping.

He turned back to his work.

Drip.

He flinched.

Drip.

He froze.

Drip drop.

He closed his eyes and hung his head.

The tap dared to drip one last time.

“ENOUGH!” He slammed his pencil onto the table and marched out the door in a blind fury. “I cannot work in these conditions!  How am I meant to concentrate on my new theory with all this commotion?”  His scrawled notes lay untouched on the granite plinth, just shuffling gently as the Professor stomped down the corridor heavily.  Soon, all that could be heard were his distant mumblings.

Dimbo plodded silently into the centre of the lab, an began sweeping the floor as he always did.  He was used to these outbursts and took advantage of these moments of relative peace to continue his own job.  The immaculate presentation of the new-fangled equipment was his responsibility, and his alone.  Sighing, he twisted the tap to left.  The dripping ceased.

Suddenly, he saw something move in the corner of his field of vision.  Now elephants (even micro ones) are not known for their agility, so instead of whipping round to investigate, he merely left the moving darkness to its own devices.  However, he could not help but notice the hairs tingling on the back of his wrinkled leathery neck.  He was not alone…

Written at a gifted and talented writer’s day last week, I think I had more fun than the kids!  This is the first page, the second will be typed out when I have a chance but it’s cold and my fingers are a bit numb.  It’s very silly.  Sorry!

Professor Harold Z. Yeldeppp was a mad, crazy, zany, mental, demented scientist, who was 74 and 3/16 years old.  He had once worked in a dilapidated, dark, damp, dirty, disorganised and dangerous underground laboratory but after employing a new member of staff, a micro-elephant named Dimbo, all that was now a thing of the past.

The professor had the meanest, crossest, most intimidating appearance you could ever have the misfortune to see.  His beady eyes were permanently frowning, creating deep crevices between his bushy, black, burrowing eyebrows.  The worry lines scattered across his forehead only served to direct any poor unsuspecting fool’s gaze towards the fetid pustule that frequently protruded from his right temple.  Dimbo expected it was from 74 adn 3/16 years of appalling bad personal hygiene.  Professor Harold believed the masses of tufty grey hair protruding from above his gargantuan ears detracted from that within his lugholes.  It did not.  Luckily, Professor Yeldeppp (a surname of his own creation) smiled very rarely, so the general public normally avoided the sickening sight of his brown sticky stumps.  I’m told they were once teeth but no one can be sure.

In complete contrast to his vile visage, Harold’s top-secret, underground, mysterious laboratory was chock-a-block full of the latest gadgets that shone and reflected light like the purest moon mirrors.  Rumour had it that his father, Bertie Little, had left him a great fortune after pilfering the proceeds of the local church’s Easter raffle for 13 years running, and was this money alone that had kitted out Harold’s workplace.  When you emerged through the silent sliding doors into his den, you could see light bouncing effortlessly off every surface, (including the elephants ears which had been polished to perfection) which created a hazy and rather hypnotic glow.

However, buried in the furthest recesses of the gizmo-filled room, lurked something evil.  Something old.  Something that even Yeldeppp would fear.